


His Lover's Wife

by wolfiefics



Category: Alexander the Great (2003) RPF
Genre: But why wouldn't he have been married?, He came from a noble house, M/M, more RPF, no known reference in history that Hephaestion ever had children by anyone, off-camera female character's death the focus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-05
Updated: 2019-02-05
Packaged: 2019-10-23 02:13:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17674463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfiefics/pseuds/wolfiefics
Summary: Alexander confronts Hephaestion over a marriage Alexander didn't know about and Hephaestion learns that his wife and child are dead.





	His Lover's Wife

Alexander stared at the last sentence in the missive. His thoughts were scattered by the words and his mind unable to grasp them.

"I ask you, my king, to comfort my son in his hour of grief. The loss of his wife and son will be difficult for him to bear, for he loved his wife, not as a wife, but as a sister, and though he saw his son but once, I know he felt proud that he had fulfilled his duty to me before leaving to fulfill his duty to you."

Wife? Son? Hephaestion?

The letter from Hephaestion's father came as a surprise to Alexander. He could count on one hand and have fingers left over the number of letters he received from Amyntor. The only living child of a good man of Macedon, Alexander knew that Hephaestion would have to one day fulfill his duties of continuing the bloodline. Never had he thought that Hephaestion had already done so. It hurt to know that Hephaestion never told him of a wife and son back in Macedonia.

Perplexed, hurt and a little angry, Alexander flung the letter onto his writing desk and contemplated the flames flickering in the brazier in the center of his large tent. He cast his mind back to their boyhood days and tried to recall Hephaestion mentioning any girls of his acquaintance but came up empty with each memory.

Who was this woman that Hephaestion guarded so zealously even from Alexander? Anger and righteous indignation lit within him. Even Achilles had not hidden his desire for Brisieus from Patroclus, so why did Hephaestion hide his wife from his Alexander? Determined to get an answer to his questions, even if he had to beat them out of Hephaestion, Alexander stood and strode from his tent, curtly dismissing the page that would have followed him. "I go to Hephaestion's tent. I've no need of a nursemaid." 

With each step Alexander took, his ire grew, so that by the time he reached Hephaestion's more modest tent he was in a fine state of rage. Without bothering to announce himself, Alexander flung open the door flap and stalked in. He looked around and did not find his target anywhere. On the desk, however, was rolled parchment: Hephaestion's mail had been delivered but he had not been back to read it.

Alexander strode over to the simple writing desk and stared at the parchment, recognizing the seal of Amyntor. Beneath it, barely visible, was a folded parchment, neat and crisp as if just recently written, bearing the seal of an unknown source. Alexander was reaching for it when he heard Hephaestion's laughter outside the tent. He turned to face his lover just as Hephaestion stepped into the cool shade of his makeshift home.

Surprise registered in Hephaestion's golden brown eyes and a pleased smile lit his face. "Alexander! What are you -"

"Who is she?" Alexander asked abruptly. His mind, still intent on getting answers, had not focused on the fact that Hephaestion had not read his mail and thus not heard the news of his family's demise.

Confusion was writ over Hephaestion's face. "She?" he asked, his smile turning into a frown. He turned back to the door and gestured. "No, that was Leonnatus, we were talking about -"

"Your wife." The words were clipped and harsh. Alexander noticed the immediate stillness of his lover's body as the words echoed.

"How did you find out?" Hephaestion's words were calm and collected, too calm and collected but Alexander was too angry to register that fact.

"A letter from your father." Alexander finally focused on the realization that Hephaestion still did not know. "You've received one as well. I suggest you -" His words were interrupted as Hephaestion shoved passed him and picked up the two missives on his desk. Alexander studied Hephaestion's features closely but was disturbed to find that he could read nothing in the blank expression upon the face he knew so well.

Hands trembling, Hephaestion broke the seal of the folded letter first and read quietly. His eyes glazed momentarily with unshed tears and he fell heavily into his desk chair. The gold-brown eyes closed a moment and one tear trekked down his cheek, but he brushed it away impatiently before breaking the seal of Amyntor on the rolled letter. After he'd finished reading, Hephaestion gently laid the letters back on his desk and stared into nothingness.

Alexander had never seen Hephaestion like this before and it unnerved him, bringing him from his injured rage to see the true grief that consumed his love. "Hephaestion, I am sorry for your loss. I would -"

"Please." Hephaestion turned away a moment and then looked up at his lover, his friend and his king. "You are furious with my deception. I don't blame you. I kept them from you a-purpose. Perhaps you've a right to be angry." For a moment Hephaestion's face darkened with anger as well. "And perhaps you do not."

Alexander was taken aback by the harsh words. "I have no right to be angry?" he spat hotly.

Hephaestion leaped to his feet. "I did my duty, but you've yet to do yours and you've more need of it than I! I saw your face, Alexander, you were ready to condemn me. Me! Your 'beloved Patroclus' for doing that which you could not bring yourself to do. At least, if I had died, there would have been someone to carry on my father's proud lineage." His voice broke and he turned away. "She was a noble woman, equal to any woman I have ever known or will ever know. The gods know she deserved better than another man's lover, but -" His voice broke again and he tipped his head back to look up at the tent's ceiling. 

"But?" Alexander prompted quietly.

"But she told me once that she would never deserve better than a king's lover." Hephaestion finished his thought as if it were unimportant. He shrugged and turned away from Alexander, shoulders slumped, suddenly weary where only minutes before he'd been happy and exuberant. Before, Alexander realized, something important had been taken from his life. "She was wrong. When it came to me, she was always wrong."

Hephaestion lay on his bed, eyes staring blankly upward, his arms flung outward as if being crucified. It hurt Alexander to see Hephaestion in such misery, though he did not understand it. "Tell me."

"No."

"Don't make me order you."

"I would disobey."

Alexander blinked. The idea of Hephaestion denying him anything was a foreign concept. "Was she so much more important than I to you then?" He couldn't keep the hurt from his voice.

"No. She was much better than the two us put together, Alexander."

"A true paragon." Alexander's tone was mildly sarcastic and he was startled when Hephaestion began to laugh uproariously.

"Iphigenia? A paragon?" Hephaestion hooted again with laughter. "She'd have hunted you down and staked you with your own sword if she'd heard you describe her as such."

Alexander grinned at the mental image of a woman plunging a sword through him, raging fiery words because he'd called her a paragon. He was also relieved at Hephaestion's sudden change in mood but it wasn't to last. Hephaestion quickly subsided into doldrums again. Unwilling to let the topic rest, Alexander prompted, "Iphigenia, eh? And yet another brush with Homer for us."

Hephaestion's smile was half-hearted at best. "Yes, I asked her father once why that name for his daughter. He said he'd always felt Agamemnon had been an idiot to sacrifice his beloved daughter for so foolish a reason as a change in wind. Old Aeson told me that he felt that perhaps the girl's spirit would live through his own child." Hephaestion's face was deeply creased with sorrow.

"And did she?"

"Oh, most definitely. Iphigenia was truly a woman of forbidable ability. She alone next to your mother I had fear of."

And that, Alexander thought, said much, considering Hephaestion had never been completely trusting of Olympias and her doings.

"Tell me about her?" Alexander invited again and he was relieved when Hephaestion shrugged and obliged.

"You know my family has close ties with Athens, that we have been citizens for several generations?" Alexander nodded, unwilling to speak lest Hephaestion change his mind. "Well, my father was educated in Athens with Aeson and they were the best of friends. I think, perhaps, once they'd been more but I was never quite certain and after my father met and married my mother it was a moot point. You know how devoted my father is to my mother." 

Alexander nodded again. Amyntor's devotion to Lyka was often remarked and joked about at court. Alexander had often seen the envy and amusement on his father's face whenever Lyka and Amyntor were mentioned.

"Iphigenia was born a year after I and our fathers' betrothed us as infants, to be married when it was agreed we were ready. We knew nothing of this; no one saw fit to inform us. Our family would visit them and they would visit us. Aeson's wife died in childbirth, along with a stillborn son, and left Aeson only with Iphigenia. Father always said that Aeson had no idea what to do with a daughter so he raised a son and placed her in girl's clothes because no one would accept her in boy's clothes." Hephaestion made a wry grimace. "You can imagine the trouble he had finding her a pedagogue, but he found one all the same and she was educated as well as any boy of her class. For a time she was better educated than I was." 

Hephaestion's sudden mischievous grin took Alexander by surprise. "She was _furious_ when she learned I was to be educated with you by Aristotle. She insisted I write every week and tell her everything I'd learned."

"You did!" Alexander remembered the long, mysterious letters that Hephaestion would write but wouldn't let anyone read.

Hephaestion nodded. "As we grew up, we were more like brother and sister and since she was more boy than girl in her manner, I often had a playmate who enjoyed climbing trees, swimming in the river, and riding horses as much as I. We even went hunting for rabbits together on occasion, when we could sneak her out. There were some things even her father drew the line at." Hephaestion's grin subsided. "She was a very good shot with a small bow."

"A most unusual woman," agreed Alexander, who actually couldn't fathom such a thing, even with his mother as a guideline. The idea of Olympias climbing a tree or hunting rabbits was beyond Alexander's comprehension.

"Yes, most unusual. So you can understand our horror when we were told that we were betrothed." Hephaestion heaved a huge sigh. "By then, you and I ... we ... well, we were lovers and it was right before we were sent into exile regarding that whole marriage debacle."

Alexander grimaced. "Not exactly the wisest move I ever made in regards to my father."

"Nor mine," agreed Hephaestion. "He was so angry! I refused to marry Iphigenia and continued to support your defiance against Philip. It was truly the only fight my father and I ever had. We said many horrible things to each other. I just remember feeling disgusted by the idea of marrying Iphigenia, Alexander! She was my _sister_ in everyway but blood - how could they conceive the notion that we would want to marry and have children? I don't care what the Egyptians do, I find nothing favorable in marrying one's sibling." Alexander smiled to himself but refrained from comment.

"But you married her."

"Yes, I married her. She was just as horrified as I was. She knew I was your lover and had no desire to force me to abandon you. We married and immediately parted. We went on campaign with your father, then he was killed and - well, you know the rest." Hephaestion shrugged, still refusing to move his stare from the ceiling.

"You had a son, something changed." Alexander frowned, not liking his direction but curious to know how Hephaestion beget a son off a woman he found unappealing as a wife.

Hephaestion shrugged. "When you made plans to go to Persia, I informed Iphigenia, thinking she would want to go with us. She has -" He broke off abruptly, his face spasming with grief. "She _had_ an adventurous spirit and I thought she'd be thrilled to leave Athens behind. She had no love of Macedon and refused all requests of my father and mother to join them at our home. I know she once had a lover in Athens, but I don't know how long the affair lasted."

Alexander bristled at the idea of any woman committing adultery on Hephaestion but reason broke through anger. Hephaestion had lovers other than her, one a prince and now king, and Hephaestion was usually fair in his outlook on people. Undoubtedly, since _he_ wasn't going to take advantage of his conjugal rights, Hephaestion would see no reason why Iphigenia could not find love and passion elsewhere. So typical of his Hephaestion. 

His attention was brought back to the aggrieved man on the bed. "We met three times before the army crossed the Hellespont and each time we were determined to give our fathers what they wanted from us. We'd grown apart a little and I felt some desire for her each time. She was beautiful, Alexander, in more than physical appearance. She had an inner fire and spirit that no water could quench. We ... coupled each meeting in the hopes that she would become with child. If she did not, she would travel with me until she was breeding and then would return home. We both knew our destinies lay elsewhere. I did not relish explaining to you why I suddenly had a wife with me. I didn't know how you would react to my secret marriage so long ago. I knew you would be hurt, probably be very angry and I didn't want to do that to you. With us gone so far away, the odds of you ever finding out were low and it was a gamble I took."

"Your father thinks I know. He wrote to tell me that you would be grieving."

Hephaestion sighed again. "I told him once that there was nothing about me that you would not know, that we shared everything."

"Apparently even Patroclus has his secrets from Achilles," Alexander rebuked mildly. He was no longer angry, more bemused by the tale and aggrieved for Hephaestion's loss. "She bore you a son?"

Hephaestion smiled. "Yes. When we were in Egypt she traveled with him to see me. It was a brief visit, more to assure me that all was well with her and the babe. I had been worried, you see. I knew she'd not been raised as most women were and was afraid something would go wrong. Iphigenia wanted to alay my fears and assure both of us that she was equal to the task of raising our son to be a true successor of two good bloodlines."

"And was he beautiful?"

Hephaestion only shrugged. "As babies go, I suppose. He squalled a lot when I was around him but it was the change in Iphigenia that convinced me that she was more than equal to the task of being a mother to a son born from us. A true lioness, Iphigenia."

"Amyntor did not tell me how she and the boy died, merely that -"

"Hector."

Alexander frowned. "What?"

"We named the boy Hector. A strong warrior, wasn't he? Noble and loyal, even if he died at Achilles' hand. I, like her father, thought maybe naming my child after an ill-fated person could give a new life to such a great hero." Alexander said nothing. There was nothing to say. "Some sort of coughing disease. He wrote it ate at her lungs. Hector too had the same symptoms. Apparently they died within a few days of each other."

"Hephaestion, I am sorry." Alexander said the words and meant them.

"I know. I too am sorry." Finally Hephaestion looked at him.

Alexander was puzzled. "Why?"

"For not telling you. It shows lack of trust in you that you do not deserve." Hephaestion's eyes reflected his self-recrimination but Alexander refused to let his friend feel so.

"No. You have given me everything I ever could want and more: your love, your soul, your body, your devotion, your loyalty, your everything. Can I begrudge you a brief time in which your loyalty rightly dictated that your duty to your family supercede any duty toward me? Your family has loyally followed my own. If that is to continue in perpetuity, you, as the only son left of your line, must have children. I have no right to begrudge you that and I am sorry that you felt you had to hide it from me so as not cause me distress."

Alexander strode over and sat next to Hephaestion's outstretched form, gently caressing the familiar face of his lover. "I love you," he said simply, "and I begrudge you nothing."

Hephaestion reached up and pulled Alexander's head down, their lips brushing briefly once, twice, before he released his hold on the golden curls that topped Alexander's head. "I begrudge you nothing as well," Hephaestion replied. "I ask one more thing?"

"Name it," Alexander stated firmly, placing his hand in Hephaestion's and squeezing gently.

"Allow me time for mourning and to draft a reply to Aeson and my father, then I will return to my duties without complaint."

Alexander shook his head and Hephaestion tensed. "As if you have to ask. Granted and gladly. Grieve, but not too deeply. I have a feeling your lionness would not approve of moping?"

Hephaestion laughed and nodded. "Oh yes, she would have approved of my moping, telling me I'll deserve it one day and to just get it out of the way. Like most sisters, she could be a spiteful handful sometimes." Alexander, who had a sister of his own, knew the breed well and laughed also. "But a couple of days only, my Alexander, I promise. Allow me time for memories and tears in solititude."

Alexander brushed his lips on Hephaestion's hand, still clutched in his own. "Take all the time you need. You have received ill-tidings from home, that is all anyone need know."

Alexander left Hephaestion's tent, setting a guard at the door, and ordering meals to be delivered there. He ignored the soft weeping of his lover for a woman Alexander wished he'd known.

**Author's Note:**

> A respected professor whom I was in communication with during my college years had written an article stating that, per an inscription found on a wall near Athens, that perhaps Hephaestion's father had Athenian citizenship. This isn't an unheard of situation, a non-Athenian native given citizenship for doing good works for the city-state. That would have given Hephaestion citizenship as well. This is the basis for my background on Hephaestion in this story. It should be remembered that Philip, Alexander's father, and Alexander tried to unite the Greek city-states into one nation, mainly so there would be no backstabbing their armies and supply lines while they invaded Persia. Philip and Alexander were both great strategists who revered the idea of Hellas, that Athens exemplified, as well, but they were pragmatic and knew that blood feuds between the city-states would cause unification issues so they forced the matter with Macedonian strength. For the most part, all but Sparta eventually fell in line. Sparta was deemed by both Philip and Alexander to be too inclined to die fighting than to give way so they let Sparta do their Spartan thing. Sparta was content to be left alone.


End file.
